by Sandra Brown
“I haven’t put on a single ounce, I’ll have you know. And I look just like I always have. Unfortunately.” Without coyness, she added, “You and Clark were the pretty ones of the family, remember? I’m the plain Jane. Or in this case, Janellen.”
“Now why would you want to piss me off first thing?” he asked. “Why go and say something like that?”
“Because it’s true.” She gave a slight shrug as though it was of little or no consequence. “Let’s don’t waste breath talking about me. I want to know about you. Where’d you come from and when did you get in?”
“Your message was channeled to me through that London phone number I gave you,” he told her around a huge yawn. “It caught up with me in Saudi. Been traveling for three, maybe four days. Hard to keep track when you’re crossing that many time zones. Came through Houston yesterday and dropped off the company plane. Got into Eden Pass last night sometime.”
“Why didn’t you wake us up? Who’s truck is that? How long can you stay?”
He raked back his hair and winced as though each follicle were bruised. “One question at a time, please. I didn’t wake you up because it was late and there was no point. I borrowed the truck from a buddy in Houston who has to deliver a plane to Longview in a couple of days. He’ll pick it up then and drive it back. And… what was the last one?”
“How long can you stay?” She folded her hands beneath her chin, looking like a little girl about to say her bedtime prayers. “Don’t say ‘just a few days.’ Don’t say ‘a week.’ Say you’re staying for a long time.”
He reached for her folded hands and clasped them. “The contract I had with that oil outfit in Saudi was almost up anyway. Right now I haven’t got anything cooking. I’ll leave my departure date open. We’ll wait and see how it goes, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you, Key.” Tears glistened in her fine blue eyes. When it came to that family trait, she hadn’t been passed over. “I hated to bother you with the situation here, but—”
“It was no bother.”
“Well it felt like a bother. I wouldn’t have contacted you if I didn’t think that having you here might somehow make things… better.”
“What’s going on, Janellen?”
“It’s Mama. She’s sick, Key.”
“Is her blood pressure kicking up again?”
“It’s worse than that.” Janellen twisted her hands. “She’s started having memory blackouts. They don’t last long. At first I didn’t even notice them. Then Maydale mentioned several instances when Mama lost things and accused her of moving them. She introduces topics into conversations that we’ve already talked about.”
“She’s getting up there in years, Janellen. These are probably nothing more than early signs of senility.”
“Maybe, but I don’t believe so. I’m afraid it’s more serious than just aging because there are days when I can tell she doesn’t feel well, much as she tries to cover up.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“She won’t see one,” she exclaimed with frustration. “Dr. Patton prescribed medication to control her blood pressure, but that was over a year ago. She browbeats the pharmacist into refilling the prescription and says that’s sufficient. She won’t listen when I urge her to see another doctor for a checkup.”
He smiled wryly. “That sounds like Jody all right. Knows better than anybody about everything.”
“Please, Key, don’t be critical of her. Help her. Help me.”
He cuffed her chin gently and said, “You’ve carried the responsibility alone for too long. It’s time I gave you some relief.” His lips narrowed. “If I can.”
“You can. This time it’ll be different between you and Mama.”
Grunting with skepticism, he threw off the sheet and swung his feet to the floor. “Hand me my jeans, please.”
Janellen was about to turn and reach for the jeans bunched up on the seat of the easy chair when she noticed the bandage around his middle. “What happened to you?” she exclaimed. “And look at your ankle!”
He nonchalantly examined his swollen ankle. “It was kind of a rowdy homecoming.”
“How’d you get hurt? Is it serious?”
“No. The jeans, please.”
Still sitting on the edge of the bed, he extended his hand. Janellen recognized the stubborn set of her brother’s scruffy jaw and handed him his pants, then knelt to help guide his bare feet through the legs.
“Your ankle’s swollen twice its size,” she muttered with concern. “Can you stand on it?”
“My doctor advised me not to,” he answered dryly. “Give me a hand.”
She helped support him as he put all his weight on his left foot and eased the jeans up his legs and over his hips. As he buttoned his fly, he gave her the naughty smile that had wreaked havoc on a legion of virtuous reputations.
Janellen couldn’t began to guess how many women her brothers had worked their magic on, especially Key. She’d always entertained a fantasy of spoiling a mixed blend of nieces and nephews, but it remained an unfulfilled dream. Key liked women, a wide assortment of them. She saw no indication that he’d soon settle down into marriage.
“You’re pretty good at helping a man into his pants,” he remarked teasingly. “Been helping one out of his lately? I hope,” he added.
“Hush!”
“Well?”
“No!” She could feel herself blushing. Key had always been able to make her blush.
“Why not?”
“I’m not interested, that’s why,” she replied loftily. “Besides, no one’s been swept off his feet by my dazzling face and form.”
“There’s nothing wrong with either,” he said staunchly.
“But they’re hardly dazzling.”
“No, because you’ve got it into your stubborn head that you’re plain Jane, so you dress the part. You’re so…” disdainfully, he gestured at her prim blouse, “buttoned up.”
“Buttoned up?”
“Yeah. What you need to do is unbutton. Unhook. Unstrap. Get loose, sis.”
She pretended to be aghast. “As an old maid, I take exception to such trashy talk.”
“Old maid! Who the hell…? You listen to me, Janellen.” He pointed his index finger at the tip of her nose. “You’re not old.”
“I’m not exactly an ingenue either.”
“You’re two years younger than me. That makes you thirty-four.”
“Not quite.”
“Okay, thirty-three. Far from over the hill. Hell, broads these days wait until they’re forty to start having kids.”
“Those who do wouldn’t appreciate your referring to them as ‘broads.’ ”
“You get my drift,” he insisted. “You haven’t even reached your sexual peak yet.”
“Key, please.”
“And the only reason you’re still a ‘maid,’ if you are—”
“I am.”
“More’s the pity… is because you clam up and shy away from any guy who even thinks about getting into your pants.”
Janellen, stricken by his crudeness, stared at him speechlessly. She worked around men eight hours a day, five days a week, and occasionally on weekends. As a rule, their language was colorful and to the point, but they monitored it when Miss Janellen was within hearing. When her employees addressed her, they cleaned up their act.
Of course Jody would shoot on sight any man using vulgarities in either her or her daughter’s presence. Paradoxically, Jody herself had an extensive vocabulary of obscenities and blasphemies, an irony that seemed to escape her.
The fact that Janellen emanated an invisible repellent against casual and unguarded behavior didn’t please her. In fact, she considered this characteristic a liability. It set her apart and proved that she didn’t attract men in any way, on any level including friendship. She couldn’t even be one of the boys, although she’d grown up having to contend with two older brothers.
She wasn’t so much affronted by Key’s salty languag
e as she was stunned. In a way she took it as a compliment. Key, however, couldn’t guess that.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered remorsefully and stroked her cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just that you’re too hard on yourself. Lighten up, for chrissake. Have some fun. Take off a year and go to Europe. Raise hell. Create a ruckus. Scare up a scandal. Broaden your scope. Life’s too short to be taken so seriously. It’s passing you by.”
She smiled, clasped his hand, and kissed the back of it. “Apology accepted. I know you didn’t mean to hurt my feelings or insult me. But you’re wrong, Key. Life isn’t passing me by. My life is here, and I’m content with it. I’m so busy, I don’t know how I’d fit in another interest, romantic or otherwise.
“Granted, my life isn’t as exciting as yours, but I don’t want it to be. You’re the globe-trotter. I’m a homebody, not at all suited to hell-raising and ruckuses and scandals.”
She laid her hand on his forearm. “I don’t want to argue with you on your first day home since Clark’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to complete the sentence. She dropped her hand from his arm. “Let’s go downstairs. The coffee should be ready by now.”
“Good. I could use a cup or two before facing the old lady. What time does she usually get up?”
“The old lady is up.”
In the doorway stood their mother, Jody Tackett.
Bowie Cato came awake when he was nudged hard in the ribs with the toe of a boot. “Hey, you, get up.”
Bowie opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. It took him several seconds to remember he was sleeping in the storeroom of The Palm, the loudest, raunchiest, and seediest tavern in a row of loud, raunchy, and seedy taverns lining both sides of the two-lane highway on the outskirts of Eden Pass.
As the recently hired janitor, Bowie did most of his work after 2:00 A.M., when the tavern closed, and that was on a slow night. In addition to the piddling salary he earned, the owner had granted him permission to sleep on the storeroom floor in a sleeping bag.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked groggily. It seemed he hadn’t slept for more than a few hours.
“Get up.” He got the boot in the ribs again, more like a bona fide kick this time. His first impulse was to grab the offending foot and sling it aside, throwing its owner off balance and landing him flat on his ass.
But Bowie had spent the last three years in the state pen for giving vent to a violent impulse and he wasn’t keen on the idea of serving another three.
Without comment or argument, he sat up and shook his muzzy head. Squinting through the sunlight coming from the window, he saw the silhouettes of two men standing over him.
“I’m sorry, Bowie.” Speaking now was Hap Hollister, owner of The Palm. “I told Gus that you’d been here all night, didn’t leave the premises once since seven o’clock last evenin’, but he said he had to check you out anyway on account of you being an ex-con. He and the sheriff asked around last night and, best as they can tell, at the present, you’re the only suspicious character in town.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Bowie mumbled as he slowly came to his feet. “It’s all right, Hap.” He gave his new employer a grim smile, then faced a bald, bloated, burly sheriff’s deputy. “What’s up?”
“What’s up,” the deputy repeated nastily, “is that Ms. Darcy Winston nearly got herself raped and murdered in her own bed last night. That’s what’s up.” He gave them the details of the attempted break-in.
“I’m awful sorry to hear that.” Bowie divided his gaze between the uniformed deputy and Hap, but they continued to stare back at him wordlessly. He raised and lowered his shoulders in a quick, quizzical motion. “Who’s Ms. Darcy Winston?”
“Like you don’t know,” the deputy sneered.
“I don’t know.”
“You, uh, were talking to her last night, Bowie,” Hap said regretfully. “She was here while you were on duty. Redheaded, big tits, had on those purple, skinny-legged britches. Lots of jewelry.”
“Oh.” He didn’t recall the jewelry, but those tits were memorable all right, and he figured that Ms. Darcy Winston knew it better than anybody. She’d been guzzling margaritas like they were lime-flavored soda pop and giving encouragement to every man in the place, including him, the lowly sweep-up boy.
“I talked to her,” he told the deputy, “but we didn’t get around to swapping names.”
“She was talking to everybody, Gus,” Hap interjected.
“But only this ’un has a prison record. Only this ’un is out on parole.”
Bowie shifted his weight and ordered his tensing muscles to relax. Dammit, he knew instinctively that trouble was just around the corner, barreling full steam ahead, ready to knock him down. He hoped to hell he could get out of its path, but the odds didn’t look good.
This two-hundred-fifty pound sheriff’s deputy was a bully. Bowie had tangled with too many in his lifetime not to recognize one on sight. He’d seen them large and muscular; he’d seen them small and wiry. A man’s size and strength had nothing to do with it. The common denominator was a meanness-for-meanness’ sake that shone in their eyes.
Bowie had first encountered it in his stepfather soon after his desperate, widowed mother had married the drunken son of a bitch who got off by slapping him around. Later, he’d recognized it in the junior high school boys’ gym teacher who daily, deliberately, humiliated the kids who weren’t natural athletes.
Standing up to his abusive stepfather and defending those pitiful kids against the gym teacher had been the start of the troubles that had eventually landed Bowie in county jail as a juvenile offender. Slow to learn, years later he’d graduated to state prison.
But this wasn’t his fight. He didn’t know Darcy Winston and couldn’t care less about the attack on her. He told himself that if he just stayed cool it would be all right. “I was here at The Palm all night, just like Hap told you.”
The deputy surveyed him up one side and down the other. “Take off your clothes.”
“Excuse me?”
“What, are you deaf? Take off your clothes. Strip.”
“Gus,” Hap said apprehensively. “You sure that’s necessary? The boy here—”
“Back off, Hap,” the deputy snapped. “Let me do my job, will ya? Ms. Winston shot at the intruder. We know she hit him ’cause there was blood on her balcony railing and on the pool deck. He left a trail of it as he ran off through the bushes.” He hitched up his gun holster, which fit in the deep crevice beneath his overlapping beer belly. “Let’s see if you’ve got a bullet wound anywhere. Take off your clothes, jailbird.”
Bowie’s temper snapped. “Go fuck yourself.”
The deputy’s face turned as red as a billiard ball. His piggish eyes were almost buried in narrowing folds of florid fat.
Now there’d be hell to pay.
Making an animalistic grunt, the officer lunged for Bowie. Bowie dodged him. The deputy took a wild swing, which Bowie also deflected. Hap Hollister shouldered his way between them. “Hey, you two! I don’t want any trouble here. I’m sure y’all don’t either.”
“I’m gonna break every bone in that little cocksucker’s body.”
“No, you ain’t, Gus.” Gus struggled against Hollister’s restraining arms, but Hap had tussled with angry drunks many times and was no small man himself. He could handle the deputy. “Sheriff Baxter would have your ass if you harassed a suspect.”
“I’m not a suspect!” Bowie shouted.
Still restraining Gus, Hap glared at Bowie over the deputy’s meaty shoulder. “Don’t go shooting off your mouth like that, kid. It’s stupid. Now, apologize.”
“Like hell!”
“Apologize!” Hap roared. “Don’t make me sorry I stood up for you.”
While the deputy seethed, Hap and Bowie exchanged challenging stares. Bowie reconsidered. If he didn’t keep a job, his parole officer would be after him. It was a lousy, goin’-nowhere job, but it was gainful employment that demonstra
ted his desire to reintegrate into society.
He for sure as hell wouldn’t go back to Huntsville. Even if he had to kiss the ass of every thick-necked meathead with a badge pinned to his shirt, he wouldn’t go back to prison.
“I take it back.” For good measure, he unbuttoned his shirt and showed his chest and back to the deputy. “No bullet holes. I was here all night.”
“And there’s probably three dozen or so witnesses who can testify to that, Gus,” Hap said. “Somebody else tried to break into Ms. Darcy Winston’s bedroom last night. It wasn’t Bowie.”
Gus wasn’t ready to concede, although it was obvious that he had the wrong man. “Funny that as soon as this parolee hits town, we get the first report of a serious crime in as long as I can remember.”
“Coincidence,” Hap said.
“I reckon,” the deputy grumbled, although he continued to glare suspiciously at Bowie.
Hap diverted him with a piece of local gossip. “By the way, guess who else blew into town last night. Key Tackett.”
“No shit?”
Hap’s maneuver worked. The deputy relaxed his official stance and propped his elbow on a shelf, for the time being forgetting Bowie and the purpose of his visit to the honky-tonk. Bowie just wanted to return to the sleeping bag and get some rest. He yawned.
The deputy asked, “What’d old Key look like? Gone to fat yet?” Laughing, he slapped his belly affectionately.
“Hell, no. Hasn’t changed a smidgen since his senior year when he led the varsity team all the way to the state playoffs. Tall, dark, and handsome as the devil hisself. Those blue eyes of his still spear into everything they land on. Still the smartass he always was, too. First time he’s been back to town since they buried his brother.”
Bowie’s ears perked up. He remembered the man they were talking about. Tackett was the kind of man who made a distinct impression on folks—male and female alike. Men wanted to be like him. Women wanted to be with him. He’d no more than sat down on a barstool when Ms. What’s-her-name with the red hair and big tits had grafted herself to him. They’d been real friendly, too, for more than half an hour. Tackett had left within minutes of her slinking exit.